Qatia Debuts Four Domestic Features at Doha Film Festival — SkimNews
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- Doha Film Festival will screen four world-premiere Qatari feature films as special screenings at its Nov. 19-27 second edition, the first time the festival has given feature-length domestic productions their own spotlight beyond its Made in Qatar shorts strand.
- The Qatari slate pairs "First to Fly," a documentary about the country's first rhythmic gymnasts at the World Championships, with "A Very Ordinary Life," a Qatar-Morocco drama about a retired pilot discovering he fathered a Moroccan daughter, plus spearfishing documentary "Jodari Meno" and journalist-war-zone doc "When the News Breaks You."
- "Elzam," a Katara Studios documentary series following Qatari falconers on hunting expeditions, screens as a special episode, underscoring how tradition-based cultural material is being treated as feature programming.
- Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi framed the lineup as proof of a sustainable industry, noting the four films plus a series 'powerfully reflect how far our creative ecosystem has come.'
- Media City Qatar co-funded three of the four features with the Doha Film Institute, with CEO Hamad Omar AlMannai highlighting the state-backed media hub's pipeline role.
- The broader program includes a 15-title competition lineup — mostly Middle East premieres, with seven of 15 directed by women — and opens with Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq's war-impact drama "The Station."
Why it matters: For a gas-and-oil state actively diversifying into media and entertainment, putting four domestic features in front of a regional festival audience is a reputational and infrastructure test: Media City Qatar is using three of the films to demonstrate its co-financing pipeline, while the institute is signaling that short-film support can now graduate to feature-length output.
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